{"product_id":"kill-the-documentary-a-letter-to-filmmakers-students-and-scholars-investigating-visible-evidence-new-challenges-for-documentary-9780231202770","title":"Kill the Documentary A Letter to Filmmakers","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn Kill the Documentary, the award-winning director Jill Godmilow issues an urgent call for a new kind of nonfiction filmmaking. In place of the conventional documentary, she advocates for a postrealist cinema.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eKill the Documentary\u003c\/i\u003e is a brilliant, angry book. An honest book. A brave book. Guggenheim Fellow and award-winning filmmaker Jill Godmilow has written a stirring call to arms. -- Cynthia Close * Documentary Magazine *\u003cbr\u003eCreatively curious pages -- Ezra Winton * Cineaste *\u003cbr\u003eJill Godmilow marshals a pantheon of hard-hitting, tough-minded films that refuse to be herded into the realist corral. Godmilow’s letter, or manifesto, like most manifestos, draws a line in the sand. Which side are you on becomes the question. Stay put and miss the point, or step on through to the other side and restore for yourself some of the nuance and subtlety that is foreign to the spirit of a manifesto. -- Bill Nichols, from the Foreword\u003cbr\u003eThis provocative and engaging book by acclaimed filmmaker Jill Godmilow raises important questions for anyone concerned about the future of political documentary.  She maps out an original approach to “postrealist” documentary that champions moral engagement, social activism, aesthetic daring, historical grounding, and intersectional participation for bold twenty-first-century filmmaking. -- Deirdre Boyle, author of \u003ci\u003eFerryman of Memories: The Films of Rithy Panh\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn her captivating and original \u003ci\u003eKill the Documentary\u003c\/i\u003e, filmmaker and critic Jill Godmilow offers a plea—in the form of a letter, which is a manifesto, and forty propositions, and a tool kit—for making \u003ci\u003epostrealist nonfiction\u003c\/i\u003e, for making film useful and fruitful. In her scathing critique of “great” documentaries, and her offering up of her own counter-canon, she insists that filmmakers and viewers can begin again by refusing the pedigree, pornography, and cultural imperialism of the real, and by supporting \u003ci\u003epostrealist strategies\u003c\/i\u003e: interventionist and interactive, performative and formal. Honestly, I don’t agree with all she says, or every one of the 144 films she honors, and that’s her urgent book’s point and purpose: I can and should make my own. -- Alexandra Juhasz, Brooklyn College, CUNY\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eKill the Documentary\u003c\/i\u003e is a provocative manifesto for rethinking the documentary. Godmilow provides a shield against the tear-soaked sentimentality and nostalgia of the Ken Burns style of packaging history. A new tool in the film teacher's kit, this book is useful beyond discussions of documentary. The passion of her prose is infectious—a welcome relief for student reading assignments. -- DeeDee Halleck, professor emerita, University of California, San Diego\u003cbr\u003eThis book will be a gold mine for any instructors putting together an “Introduction to Documentary Filmmaking” syllabus or for cinematic autodidacts hungry to experiment with alternative modes of nonfictional filmmaking. -- Jaimie Baron * Film Quarterly *\u003cbr\u003eHerein lies the specificity and refreshing nonconformity of [this] book: it pushes the reader not only to see through the ideological premises of conventional formats, but also to delve into the multiple configurations that generate subversive experiences . . . [Godmilow's] persistent faith in the importance of developing critical awareness and in the agency of art to intervene into reality despite the omnipresent ‘capitalist realism’ in the global neoliberal society radiates a compelling force. -- Stefanie Baumann * Radical Philosophy *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTable of Contents\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eManifestly Radical: A Foreword, by Bill Nichols\u003cbr\u003eAcknowledgments\u003cbr\u003eI Call This Book a Letter\u003cbr\u003eIntroduction—a Letter to Filmmakers\u003cbr\u003e1. Abandon the Conventional Documentary—Reject Realism as the Only Authentic Nonfiction Form\u003cbr\u003e2. Take Action—Make Useful Postrealist Films\u003cbr\u003e3. Forty Postrealist Strategies to Learn from and Borrow\u003cbr\u003e4. The Toolkit\u003cbr\u003eNotes  \u003cbr\u003eBibliography\u003cbr\u003eIndex","brand":"Columbia University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49400362828119,"sku":"9780231202770","price":22.5,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9780231202770.jpg?v=1730470498","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/kill-the-documentary-a-letter-to-filmmakers-students-and-scholars-investigating-visible-evidence-new-challenges-for-documentary-9780231202770","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}